You can't always get what you want* – Emeralda Marsh

June 5, 2010Emeralda Marsh, INSIDE FLORIDAAntiques, Cars, Cattle Egret, Dragonfly, Horse, plowEd Rosack

Four of us from the Photography Interest Group rolled out before dawn this morning to visit “The crown jewel of bird watching in Lake County”, Emeralda Marsh. It’s a little over an hour drive on mostly rural roads from our normal meeting place in Oviedo through Central Florida to Tavares. “Donuts” found this place on the web and it sounds really good. He called ahead to ask about it and learned that the driving route through the marsh is only open from February through May – but we still decided to go ahead and explore it. While up there, we also drove to and walked around Sawgrass Island Preserve.

It’s difficult to judge any place based on just one visit. Even at the best known and consistent locations we occasionally have a hard time getting photos of wildlife. Sometimes you just have to be patient and really work for your photos. Today was one of those times – especially since we were in an area we weren’t familiar with. [4/16/11 update: Here is a new post on Emeralda Marsh based on our return visit]

It’s disappointing that the Emeralda Marsh Interpretive Drive isn’t open all year. I’m certain that would’ve made our trip much more successful. As it was, we had to park and hike looking for scenic places and wildlife and we weren’t able to cover as much ground. The end result was that for wildlife, today was somewhat of a bust. We talked about returning next February when the driving route is open.

Over several hikes, we saw quite a lot of Florida scrub land and very few birds or other wildlife. But photographers are resourceful and we did see many things worth taking photos of. My photos seemed to develop a theme of “Things in people’s yards”, also known as TIPY. I’ve created of a set of thirteen of these photos on Flickr (set, slideshow), and I’ve posted a few below. If you go to the set on Flickr, you can see things like llamas, dogs, additional old farm equipment and a flower. See the captions for details.

Old plow and horse. It doesn’t look too much like a plow horse to me.

Old Blue Truck – We came across several old trucks this morning and this was the last one we found. Since it was blue, it completed my full spectrum RGB set. You can see the Red and Green trucks on my Flickr Feed.

Cattle Egret and Horse

Dragonfly in flight – I was waiting in the car for the rest of the group and noticed some dragonflies that were moving past the window. I decided to try to capture one in flight.

At the end of the trip, we found a close by Cracker Barrel restaurant and stopped to eat. Today, we had fun. We had breakfast. We made some photos worth posting. And we confirmed that even though you don’t always get what you want, if you try sometimes you find – you get what you need*.

*With apologies to the Rolling Stones

Memorial Day, 2010

May 30, 2010St. Augustine, VARIOUSflag, fort, Fort Matanzas, Memorial Day, military, PoliticsEd Rosack

Once again we pause to reflect and thank all those that serve or have served our country and helped keep us free. Please know that we appreciate your service and can never thank you enough.

The Flag of the United States of America, flying at the Fort Matanzas National Monument, near St. Augustine, Florida.

Many in our family have served in the military.

Lynn’s Grandfather, Harold Christensen was a Navy pilot in the second World War. As an electrical engineer I enjoyed hearing him talk about working on the top secret team that developed radar for use on aircraft. Lynn’s father, Doug was also in the Navy. He was stationed in Pensacola after WW II. Both Lynn’s Grandfather and father been gone for some time. We miss them.

Two of my Mother’s brothers, uncle Jack and uncle Fred, were in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. They never said much about their time in the service. Jack passed away a year or two ago. We miss him too.

My Dad and his brother were both young men during World War II and both were in the Army. My Dad started high school just as WW II broke out and he enlisted as soon as he could. After basic training in Florida and some additional training as an intelligence recon scout, he shipped out to Europe. By that time, the war had ended and he was stationed in Furth, Germany – just outside Nuremberg as part of the occupation. He was there during the time of the Nuremberg trials. Dad had several stories he used to tell about his time in the Army. Most were quite fun, although I never heard him talk about the trials. I’m not sure if all his experience was happy, but those were the only ones he shared with us. He passed away quite a while ago, and of course we’ll always remember him.

I didn’t know much about my uncle’s service until we visited him just after Christmas last year and I asked about it. Msgr. Edward V. Rosack (we called him Fr. Ed) also joined the Army Signal Corps after he graduated from high school during WW II. He was older than my father and served in the Pacific Theater of Operations for about two years. His tour of duty took him to the Hawaiian Islands, Marshall Islands, (Einewetok, Kwajalein, the Palau Island (Angaur), Mariana Island (Saipan), Ryukyu Island (Okinawa), Korea (In chon) and Yokohama, Japan. As a member of the 3922nd Signal Service Company of the 3117th Signal Service Battalion, his outfit was awarded the Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon with one bronze star (Angaur, Palau Islands). Watching Ken Burns “Pacific” mini-series recently brought home what a great sacrifice and profound experience it must have been for him and everyone else in those battles. I can only imagine the hardships and horror that he and others endured. I wonder if that is at least partly what drove him to become a man of peace for the rest of his life. Sadly, Fr. Ed passed away in March of this year, not long after we visited him. We’ll always remember him too.

Sunrise and Wading Egret – Persistance Pays

May 23, 2010INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWR, Techniquebirds, BPWD, Snowy Egret, sunriseEd Rosack

A few of us from the Photography Interest Group drove over to Black Point Wildlife Drive yesterday morning. We had one new member with us and for the first half of the loop we were all a bit worried about the lack of good photo opportunities — although I had made one sunrise photo that I like.

Swampy sunrise

We didn’t see many birds at first and the water level was down a bit. I’m not sure why since I think we’ve had a good amount of rain lately. Perhaps it was due to tides.

We were more than half way around the loop when we came up on two pools on the left hand side with a lot of bird activity. It turns out there were large numbers of small minnows in the pools and a variety of herons, ibis and egrets were flying back and forth between the pools feeding on the fish. Situations like this provide a wonderful opportunity for photographers. Just as in the nest building scenario I wrote about a few weeks ago, the birds act in a somewhat predictable, repeatable way. You can study them and place yourself in good light and to show the birds’ activity in their environment. I was looking for something a little different and spotted this break in the reeds with the sun coming over my shoulder. I only had to wait a little while for an obliging Snowy Egret to pose between the reeds for me. Now, if it had only raised its crest!

Snowy Egret Posing

Remember when you’re making photos of very white birds like this to check your histogram. Make sure your exposure isn’t blowing out the white highlights so that you preserve detail in the feathers. If you do have pixels up against the right side of the histogram, use a little negative exposure compensation to move them back toward the left.

Once again patience and persistence paid off for us and everyone in the group had a chance at some very good photos. I’ve also written here before about not putting your camera away until you’re back in the car. Yesterday was another example of this very important rule!

Click on either of the photos above to go to Flickr, where you can view them larger. You can also see other photos I’ve made at Black Point in this set on Flickr.

Where's EdRo?

May 10, 2010INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, Theme ParksAnimal Kingdom, birds, Flowers, Ibis, Owl, Rhino, wildlifeEd Rosack

So we’re going to try something a little different. This will be a variation on the game “Where’s Waldo”, except you have to guess where I was last Saturday, based on the photos below. And you have to find me in at least one photo. We’ll use my Twitter handle and call it “Where’s EdRo?”. All of these photos were made in the same general area. To play fair, you aren’t allowed to scroll down too far before you guess. Forensic investigation of EXIF data is possible, but also against the rules. There’s no prize, but if enough people demand it, I can see about having something for the next time we play.

The point of the game is to remind you that you need to look around and find the non-obvious photos wherever you are. Go ahead and get the “trophy shots” (photos that everyone takes at a popular spot), but don’t forget to share your unique vision, perspective, and outlook with others.

Want to play? Here goes…

Clue #1: An interesting wall.

Clue #2: Nice light on an Ibis.

Clue #3: Flowers, leaves, sky.

Have you guessed where I was yet? If not, here’s some more clues:

Clue #4: Blue wall, red windows.

Clue #5: River landing and flowers.

Do you have it yet? If not, here’s a couple more.

Clue 6: Surprise and delight.

One last clue:

Clue 7: Rhino profile

If you haven’t guessed yet, then go to this set of mine on Flickr for additional clues. I’ve added a total of 21 photos there. Some are obvious and some are not. Hopefully they all let you see this place through my eyes.

Thanks for playing my little game. Now, go out there and look past the obvious shots.

Three Topic Post

May 2, 2010Blogging, Gatorland, INSIDE FLORIDA, VARIOUSbirds, blog info, Cattle Egret, Cormorant, Great Egret, Moorhen, Politics, Wood StorkEd Rosack

I’m going to depart from my usual practice of one subject per post and include three different ones in today’s entry.

Photos and information on a visit to Gatorland, yesterday.
An update on this blog after three years of publication
A political comment

Feel free to read the portion you’re interested in, or indulge me and look at all three.

1. Gatorland May Day Update

If you haven’t yet visited Gatorland this year, now is still a great time. Yesterday morning, I decided to drive down there to see how the rookery is progressing through nesting season. We’ve had a cold winter in Florida and as a result, the birds are about a month behind the normal schedule. The last time I visited (in March), it was mostly the great egrets building nests, courting, and sitting on eggs. Yesterday the Great Egrets were still very active (many with large chicks), but there are also Cattle Egrets, Tri-Colored Herons, Anhingas, and Cormorants all very actively fulfilling the purpose of life.

~~By the way, have you looked lately at the Gatorland blog that Mike Godwin writes ? He’s posted a report on the current nesting activity~~ (sorry – no longer available), with a lot of detail and photos. There’s also an active Gatorland Flickr group and looking at the photos posted there on any given day can give you a real good idea of what’s going on.

Here’s some of what I saw yesterday:

Pair of Great Egret chicks in nest: You can get an idea of how far along the Great Egrets are by the size of this cute pair.

Cattle Egret: This one was hiding in the brush, but still posing. The Cattle Egrets seem to be just getting started with a lot of nest-building going on.

Mother Cormorant with just hatched chicks: Not a great photo, but you can see the chicks beside the very protective mother. Their eyes were not yet open and there was another un-hatched egg in the nest, so they had to be only hours old.

Common Moorhen Chick: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a moorhen chick before, but I have to admit I haven’t been paying that much attention to this species. They’re very common in the area.

Wood Storks and chicks on nests: Mike Godwin is a great host at Gatorland. He made sure we knew where these nests were so we could photograph them. There were two right next to each other and they were very crowded and active.

You can click on any of the photos above to view them on Flickr. You can also take a look at my Gatorland set on Flickr for some other photos from yesterday (the last nine in the set) as well as from previous visits.

2. Happy Birthday, Blog!

My first post was on the 4th of May, 2007, so it will be three years old on Tuesday. Not a long time in absolute terms, but more than a lifetime for some in “internet years”.

The blog has morphed a bit since then. Originally it was just a place to share my photos, photo experiences, and talk about photo related ideas. I still do that, but I’ve added a theme around all of this: I try to find interesting places around here to make photographs and then post blog entries including links to information about the places as well as some hints on what’s there and how to photograph it. My hope is that this will be interesting to photo enthusiasts visiting the area as well as people who live here. I know I’ve looked for similar blogs when I travel.

With this one, there are a total of 89 posts so far which is an average of about two per month, although lately I’ve been doing pretty well keeping up with my goal of one post each week. Of these, 45 are tagged “CFL Photo ops”, about photo opportunities in the area.

As near as I can tell from my server logs (and disregarding spam and robots), I seem to modestly successful – at least some people are reading what I write. If I’m interpreting the CyStats log correctly, I have over 100 RSS subscribers, and about 10 – 30 visitors on average each day. They are from multiple countries, which is really nice. The most visitors I’ve had in a single day was close to 200 early this year after Jim Goldstein posted his “best photos of 2009” entry on his blog. Thanks, Jim! The most viewed page is the main page, with the My Favorite Photos of 2009 post coming in second.

The most used browser, by a slim margin is Internet Explorer (~51%), followed by Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, etc. Many people still use IE version 6.0. If that’s you – update! Modern browsers are much more capable and secure.

Recent, frequent external search terms include things like: “focus bracketing”, “gatorland photographers”, “central florida photos”, “orlando bird photography”, “alligator farm orlando”, “orlando photo ops”, “photographing birds in central flordia”, “good area to photograph fl”, “central florida places to photo”, “wildflower photography in florida”, “photographing birds in central florida”, “photographing wildlife in central florida”, and “ed rosack”. I’m pleased that people are finding my blog with those search terms.

Of course, I’m my most loyal reader. I’ve enjoy writing it, but I also really enjoy going back and reading it and looking at the photos. I guess it really is a blog in the sense of a personal journal.

And what’s up with all the weird spam comments? Do they really think I’ll let those through? Would anybody? Why do they keep sending them?

I don’t really have any plans to change the blog going forward. However, I’d really like to figure out how to encourage more genuine comment and interaction. And, I’m always open to your ideas and suggestions. Especially for places around here to visit!

3. Warning – Politics Ahead

Caution – I apologize, but this paragraph is political. It does relate to photography and nature in general. Read at your own risk.

As I wrote down the words in topic one above about witnessing nature in all its glory, I couldn’t help but think a great deal about the gulf coast shoreline and what is beginning to happen there to countless birds, their chicks, and other wildlife from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The impact on people who are continuing to recover from hurricane Katrina will be an additional nightmare still to come. And the news this morning reports that it will eventually reach the east coast of Florida too as the Gulf Stream current spreads the spill.

The scope of this disaster is unprecedented – and it was a remote possibility. We can’t jump to conclusions yet, but complacency and the bottom line during the design of this oil drilling rig sure do seem to be causing great damage. I wonder how many of the decisions that were made in the design were probably financial in nature and not based on the worst case outcome, which by the way is occurring? The platform was either not designed or not built to preclude or handle it.

I also wonder if there are engineering memos or PowerPoint slides somewhere warning of this type of consequence if the design went forward as planned? I wonder how many fail safes in the well shut off valve didn’t fail safe and instead just failed due to shoddy workmanship or poor design? I wonder how the engineers that designed, built, and tested the equipment on that well feel today? I wonder how their management can sleep at night? I wonder how long British Petroleum will take to bring the well leak under control? And I wonder how they will ever undo the damage they’ve done.

So far there are no answers, only questions. And thousands of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico every hour of every day.

Sharing sights and vision – Goats on a roof

April 25, 2010OUTSIDE FLORIDA, WisconsinGoat, travelEd Rosack

One of the things that makes photography so interesting is the ability to share sights and vision. We photographers love to capture the sights we see so that we can revisit them later and show them to others. We also love to capture the sights we see in a different way so that even if someone else has already seen something, we can show our unique vision to them.

This morning, I revisited some photos I made in September of 2006. Before Sara and Mike took Lynn and I to Wisconsin’s Door county, I’d never seen (or heard of, or even thought about) goats on a roof. But on N Bay Shore Dr in Sister Bay, you’ll come across a small herd of goats on the roof of Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant. Not only that, but a Google search will reveal other goats on other roofs. And – a search on Flickr returned 143 images this morning (actually this is a surprisingly small number) of goats on roofs. I wonder if this is a trend? You really do need to pay attention to keep up.

Door county is a beautiful place. And it has goats on a roof too. I don’t think I captured them in a unique way, but they’re certainly worth sharing with others. What unique or unusual things have you seen and shared lately?

Goats on a Roof – 1

Goats on a Roof – 3

Birds on the wing: Flight photo tips

April 18, 2010TechniquebirdsEd Rosack

Today’s post is a little different. Instead of talking about a particular Central Florida Photo Op, I’ll share some photo tips.

Bird photography can be very hard, and photographing birds in flight is even more so. In this article, I’ll point out several things that may help you improve your photos.

Great Blue Heron in flight, Orlando Wetlands Park, 1/1000 sec, f/5.6, 300mm, ISO 320

First of all, here are several links to information elsewhere on the web. They cover a lot of things you should do to improve your percentage of “keepers” when photographing birds.

“Birds in Flight”, Andy Lang: ~~http://www.firstlighttours.com/birds_in_flight_article.html~~ (sorry, no longer available)
“Photographing Birds In Flight”, ~~http://www.wildlife-photography-tips.com/photographing-birds-in-flight.html~~ (sorry, no longer available)
“They touch the heavens”, Moose Peterson: http://www.vividlight.com/Articles/2303.htm
“Tips for learning how to photograph Birds in Flight”, Jay Paredes: http://www.evergladesphotosociety.org/articles/flightpart01.html

One thing I didn’t see mentioned is how great nest building season is for bird flight photography.

Great Blue Herons like the one above frequently nest in the tops of palm trees. The female will generally stay at the nest, while the male retrieves sticks for her to use. If you come across this situation like we did yesterday at Orlando Wetlands Park, you should take advantage of it to really boost your ability to get good frame filling photos of birds in flight.

Why? Well when they’re building a nest, the birds can be very predictable. The nest is in one location, and frequently the male bird will return to the same tree or general area to get another branch for his mate to use. The nest building usually goes on for quite some time and predictable flight paths together with multiple opportunities are a huge advantage for the observant, prepared photographer.

If you watch the activity for a while, you should be able to determine where to position yourself for the best chance of a good photo. You want to be along the flight path close enough to fill the frame, and have the sun in a good position to light the bird.

Optimize your camera settings for this type of photo and take time between flights to double check your results.

Do you have a high enough shutter speed (generally 1/1000sec or better)?
Is your aperture appropriate (one or two stops down from wide open would be best for image quality and depth of field)?
What’s your ISO set to (as low as possible given the light and desired shutter and aperture)?
Have you set continuous focus mode and high speed release?
Did you turn off bracketing from your last HDR shot :-)?

When the bird takes off (probably into the wind) concentrate on keeping the focus mark on the bird (the eye, if possible). Pan smoothly as the bird flies. For better composition, try to leave a little room in the frame in front of the bird. Wait until there’s a lull in the action before you chimp the shots. Make sure they’re what you expect. If not, adjust and wait for the next flight.

And don’t forget to get some photos of the male as he passes the stick to the female.

One more thing – after the chicks hatch, you can still use this tip. The birds will be out searching for food for the babies, and you can stake out the nest in the same way as they return with a meal.

Great Blue Heron in flight, bringing stick to mate in nest, 1/2500 sec, f/5.6, 300 mm, ISO 640

I hope you liked this photo tip. Let me know if it helps you.

(Note: You can click on either of these photos to see a larger version on Flickr.)

Another Central Florida Wildflower post

April 11, 2010INSIDE FLORIDA, Ocalabarn, FlowersEd Rosack

Wildflower photography is a little different in Central Florida than some other areas of the country (for example, see: http://ca.myphotoscout.com/2010/04/07/wildflower-routes-through-southern-california/). Some might say it’s more challenging here, and I doubt anyone comes to Central Florida specifically to photograph wildflowers. None the less, wildflower photo ops are around here too if you keep your eyes open.

Roadside Flowers alongside the Florida Turnpike. I saw these while driving home from Gainesville, Florida yesterday afternoon. I had to stop and photograph them.

I’ve posted previously about wildflower and roadside flower photography in Central Florida. If you haven’t read these before, check them out:

https://edrosack.com/2009/05/09/roadside-flowers-2/ is about roadside flowers on the way to Mount Dora.
https://edrosack.com/2007/10/07/storm-and-flowers/ and https://edrosack.com/2009/10/10/lake-jessup-conservation-area-wildflowers/ are about wildflowers around Lake Jessop
https://edrosack.com/2009/05/09/wetland-wildflowers/ mentions wildflowers at Orlando Wetlands Park.

My drive yesterday reminded me that the Turnpike and Interstates in Florida break out in bloom this time of year too. I’ve seen this before – here’s a photo I made way back in 2001 on the side of I-75 near Ocala, Florida:

New Flowers, Old Barn

So if you’re in Yosemite or some other photogenic place during wildflower season that’s great. If not, don’t worry about it. Stop and smell the flowers wherever you are and make some interesting photos too.

Note: You can click the photos above to go to Flickr where you can see a larger version.

Dusk at Lake Eola

April 4, 2010INSIDE FLORIDA, Lake Eolaastronomy, birds, sunsetEd Rosack

Intro / Description

Dusk, Lake Eola, 8:14pm, 17mm, 6.0 seconds @ f/8

This large lake in downtown Orlando formed from a sinkhole and has been a city park since 1892. It’s famous for its fountain – which unfortunately isn’t working now although it’s supposed to be repaired in 2010. There are swan shaped paddle boats that you can rent and live swans you can feed along with occasional other birds that you can watch and photograph. There’s also a playground, a small outdoor café and an amphitheater for special events. The night we were there the First Annual Orlando Chillounge Night at Lake Eola was taking place on the east side of the lake, which made for quite a crowd.

We saw a boat leave the dock as we arrived with what looked like fireworks aboard. We kept an eye on it and tried to be ready when they launched. After a while, we gave up and of course, they launched right after that. There was only one quick set. Lynn really enjoyed watching us scramble to reset our cameras and by the time we were ready there was nothing left but a few smoke trails. Oh well, a reason to go back.

If you’re looking for a place in Orlando to take a photo walk, practice some street photography, and / or make some cityscape images at sunset – Lake Eola is a good place to start.

Info for Photographers

Photo hints: Get there well before sunset and stay for a while after. You never know what the sky colors will do. You’ll want to set up on the south-east side for sunset. After sunset, try a few small aperture / long exposure photos to blur the water in the fountains and make the lights into nice star shapes.

Tripod/Monopod: No problem – there’s plenty of room to set up. You’ll definitely need one for long exposures. Bring your cable release or remote too.

Lenses: This is a wide-angle photo-op. My 16 – 35mm lens worked nicely to take in the whole lake and cityscape. To practice your street photography a 35mm will probably work, although you might want to bring another lens (24 – 70?) too.

Best time to visit: You’ve heard me say before that spring is a wonderful time in Central Florida. The weather is just fantastic. We had temperatures in the 70s and the humidity wasn’t too high. There were some insects out, but they weren’t the biting kind.

Other: Parking could be a problem depending on what else is going on when you visit. We were there on a Saturday evening, and even with an event happening at the east end of the lake, we found a parking spot in a lot about a block south for $5. The park hours are Mon-Sun 6 a.m. – 12 a.m

Summary

My Lake Eola photo set on Flickr:	The set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/sets/72157623643136939/Here’s a slide show of the images (click to start, and when running click to go to the photo on Flickr):
Website:	http://www.cityoforlando.net/FPR/HTML/Parks/lakeeola.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_eola
Address / Phone:	195 N Rosalind Avenue, Orlando, Florida(407) 246-2827
Central Florida Photo Ops Rating:	Nice evening for a stroll. Bring your photo gear!